When Did Fall Become the Start of the Christmas Season?

Fall has arrived. Trees are putting on their glorious rainbow coat, covering the mountainside where I live with a golden splendor. The air is refreshingly crisp, and soon it'll be time to take a trip to the farm to select the biggest pumpkin, a basket of apples and a few cornstalks to decorate your home for the fall season. Santa Claus will be right out there to help you select your favorites. He'll be standing in the midst of the pumpkins and it's still a month away from Halloween. Is something wrong here? Did I miss the alert that said, "Fall will now initiate the beginning of Christmas?"

I'm sure you still have a few Christmas decorations lying around collecting dust, the ones that you didn't get a chance to put them back in the closet or up attic steps or even out in the garage. That's perfect, just intermingle them with your scarecrow and front porch harvest décor. Dracula and Frankenstein would love to have Santa and his furry deer join them in their wild dance under a full Halloween moon. Commercialism has now officially taken over the holidays. Soon we'll be shooting off Santa Claus rockets on the Fourth of July.

Who initiated this movement to start the Christmas season three months before the day? I refuse to use the word X-mas, again initiated by an unnamed party. Do you remember the year when retailers considered it a curse to even use the word, Christmas, and all symbols of Christmas religious meaning were removed from shelves, leaving us with Santa Claus, Disney characters, and snowmen to represent the season. You had to really search hard to find even one angel or any manger scenes. I believe commercialism and the mighty dollar had a hand in this, because they wanted everyone to spend their money freely and decorate homes for the season without having a religious connotation. The Grinch definitely stole Christmas that year.

Now with the sad state the economy is in, how can we stand being bombarded with retail circulars, already leaping at a chance to make their money and not waiting for school supplies to be removed from their aisles this year? In one store I noticed Santa Claus pencils and pads in the back to school section. How can people even think of buying unnecessary, unappreciated gifts, when they're struggling to hold on to homes? How can we spend months looking in our children's eyes staring at toy circulars, when we have lost our jobs because of cutbacks, out sourcing, and the recession? Our credit card bills, gas bills, and tax bills overwhelm us. We now are informed that our tax money's being used to bail out rich bank corporations, while we're left standing on our own having no possible way to refinance our mortgages and bills. We're forced to claim bankruptcy and have our homes foreclosed. No one's standing around with ready made money to help us out. Of course there's always talk about meetings and task forces meeting to discuss how we can be helped out, but how come we don't get tax money doled out for our potential losses?

Fall's a beautiful season, and Halloween's a creative holiday, but forcing Christmas on us too early disturbs the pleasure of the season. "Peace on earth, good will to men," sounds wonderful when you hear the carol being sung, but not when you hear it three months straight.

Christmas is a season of joy and love, a time to remember the greatest gift of love by a baby's birth. This is the time people reach out and offer assistance to struggling people, stop and notice each other with a warm greeting, a smile and a nod. This year with so many people struggling to keep a roof over their head and gas in their car, this spirit is needed more than ever, for support. I just don't think having Santa Claus in a pumpkin patch in the fall will make this happen. Am I the only one who believes this?

The End